-Submitted photo
Dr. Andrew Friskop of North Dakota State University, left, Dr. Daren Mueller of ISU, center, and Ed Zaworski of ISU, discuss Goss's Wilt, a bacterial disease of corn. The podcast was recorded at the Agronomy on Ice event in Devils Lake, North Dakota, and was the eighth episode of season one of Zaworski's "I See Dead Plants."

AMES — Born and raised in Joliet, Ill., Ed Zaworski had his sights on becoming a veterinarian. “I grew up about as far from any rural or agricultural areas as a person could get. I came to Iowa to attend a veterinary college,” said Zaworski. “I interned for a professor at a vet school, and I ended up working for him for a year, ultimately deciding that I didn’t want to be a vet.

“Of all places, I was introduced to my future career on a basketball court in Ames, where I met Dr. Daren Mueller, an Iowa State University (ISU) Extension pathologist who works with corn and soybeans. He heard I wasn’t going to vet school and gave me an opportunity to get involved with plant pathology, and the rest is history.”

Zaworski’s history, however, was just beginning to take shape, earning a master’s degree in plant pathology in 2014 as a grad student under Dr. Mueller, and he has been working in the ISU Plant Insect Diagnostic Clinic ever since.

“Plant pathology is one of the many fields that doesn’t get a lot of attention from the general public,” said Zaworski. “In diagnostic work, we take plant samples from any place in Iowa, extension offices, farmers, state agencies, you name them — any individual as well — who has a plant problem. We examine those samples for signs of plant pathogens, for example bacteria, fungi, viruses, and other pathogens, and then we strive to give a diagnosis from there. If possible, we give management recommendations based on what we find. That’s the life of a diagnostician.”

With further influence from colleague and friend Mueller, Zaworski — in the fall of 2021 began a podcast titled “I See Dead Plants.” If your mind wanders quickly to the movie “The Sixth Sense,” the reference is made on purpose to the film’s iconic line, “I see dead people.” Zaworski bills his podcasts as a “focus on the stories of people and plants, pests and pathogens, and the conflicts among them.”

“The podcast was an apple in our eye in late 2020 when we were finding new ways to do extension work,” said Zaworski. “The podcast first aired in fall of 2021. It started out that we wanted to get the word out about plant pathogens. The group I work with on campus is Integrated Pest Management, so it’s a school of thought on managing pests. It then morphed into something bigger where we interview people across the nation concerning different pest systems they work on and the different cropping systems they employ.”

Listenership data can be elusive, said Zaworski. Most folks pick up the podcast from the Crop Protection Network site.

“We’ve had great feedback from colleagues in a number of states, and that’s what keeps us going,” said Zaworski. “Our original intended audience was the general public, but it’s shifted to people in academia, people in ag business, and people in our extension corps. We’re getting a lot of anecdotal feedback that says we’re doing a good thing for our listeners. We speak to the folks who are helping the rest of us live healthier, more productive lives through pest management research and education. We strive to make science accessible.”

While Zaworski notes that all his podcasts are a learning opportunity and enjoyable, he found ones on soybean and coffee rust to stand out.

“Our guest was Ed Sikora from Alabama who talked about soybean rust; before we ever saw it in the United States, Sikora was part of an effort to study it. He was working out plans to deal with it, so it could be managed when it hit the U.S. When there is something new, it’s exciting for plant pathologists — of course, not so for everyone else. These are certainly problems for farmers, so we try to limit our excitement for new pathogens. Sikora keeps track of where the rust is and how to manage it.

“We also did a historical piece on coffee rust, which went back to when people started drinking

coffee. When Europeans went from drinking coffee to tea, it was in large part due to coffee

rust. Coffee production started in Ethiopia and then migrated to Central and South America and

now Hawaii in an effort to escape coffee rust. I’m keeping an eye out for a person who can help me do a new in-depth dive on coffee production.”

“I See Dead Plants” is now in its second season with 28 episodes under its belt, aiming to air

weekly via Spotify, iTunes, and the https://cropprotectionnetwork.org/.